May is the month you will dance more! We’ve made it our mission for the month of May to help people dance more in milongas, and with the people they’ve been secretly dying to dance with!
In this series of 4 blog posts, we are sharing two tips a week to help you dance more, and with partners that you love. And at the end we’ll be sharing a video with Pablo and Naomi showing and explaining all of them. We focus on the more hidden aspect of dancing socially, which teachers often don’t have time to teach in classes. We know, as milonga organisers, that they will make your time in milongas more enjoyable!
Today, let’s discuss about connection: it is so important in tango that if you focus on connecting, more people will want to dance with you.
Start by checking our first tips:
Tip 1: Check your posture on and off the dancefloor
Tip 2: Use the cabeceo
Tip 3: being active in the pre-cabeceo
Tip 4: Cabeceo your way onto the dance floor
Tip 5: Approaching your tango partner powerfully
People think that good dancers are people who know a lot of steps but actually you can spot a good dancer before they’ve taken a single step – by looking at the way they approach their partner.
This means that the moment when we start dancing – the very beginning, which starts when we look at our partner with the mirada – is very important. From that very moment our posture and attitude should change. It means that when we approach our partner, we should be straight, elegant and ready to dance (little tip: activate your core muscles).
Once, we’ve entered the dance floor together, then we can beautifully embrace our partner: what we recommend is to find contact with our partner first with the torso, then use the arms and go into the abrazo. It feels wonderful for our partner when they feel that we are taking the time to embrace and connect with them.
Tip 6: Focus your attention on your partner
If you’ve done a bit of people-watching in milonga, I’m sure you’ll agree: when we are watching dancers, we can see feelings and connection.
So, how do we connect? To help our students understand connection, we like asking this question: how much attention are you giving to your partners when you are dancing?
When we ask that question in our classes, the answers usually come like this: followers say that around 50% of their attention is on their partner, while the leaders start at 40% and then go down to 20% or even 10%!
What we believe here at Tango Space is that for people to enjoy dancing with us – leaders as much as followers – they need to feel listened to. So most of our attention should be on our partner. We actually recommend to use the 80/20 rule: 80% of your attention on your partner, 20% on your technique and the music.
So, next time you are in a milonga, you can think about the way you go into the embrace, and how much of your attention is on your partner. Now we’d love to hear from you: are there any tips you would like to share on how to connect more?
Next week, we will talk about two pillars of tango dancing that go beyond the technique: floor craft and musicality. See you next week!
Abrazos,
Anne
